Caroline Pitcher

The Littlest Owl, is about a family of five owls, the mother and four babies. Once the babies hatched their shells they quickly discovered baby number four was smaller than the rest. Throughout the story we learn number four struggles to progress like its siblings especially when it comes to flying. One night a large storm comes and about breaks the tree in which they live. Finally, since four never gave up when it was pivotal to fly four accomplished it.
Personally I could relate to this book because I remember as a child wondering if my little brother would catch up to his friends. He was always smaller and slightly behind the curve. As he grew so did his abilities and eventually he caught up and surpassed a lot of his friends. I think this book teaches the readers an important lesson in not giving up if at first you don’t succeed.
Perseverance is something I feel today’s youth lacks on; therefore, I feel like this book would be a good way to introduce this topic. I think there would be a good art project that could be done through this. In one class I took the teacher asked us to trace our hand and fill it with things that represent us. I think this could be applied here by having the children fill the hand with things that they want to achieve, thus giving them a time to reflect on this concept. Another way in which we could incorporate this book in to the classroom would be to do a lesson on descriptive words. This book is full of words describing the owls, nature, and disposition. I think this would be a good way to ask students to pick out the words used to describe the owls, maybe through a work sheet or on the board.
Overall, I found this book to be very cute and easy to read. It had a clear them about nature and the process from egg to adult owl and introduced different idea about the struggles we all go through. The theme was carried out from the beginning to the end. Great book!… (more)

Fantasy
Age Appropriateness: primary, intermediate
There are four baby owls. The fourth and smallest one has doubts about what he is capable of. But he believes he will fly and keeps trying day and night. This is put to the test when a wind storm comes he is forced to fly.
This is a good fantasy book because it teaches kids to never give up and to always keep trying. And the author does this by making owls look like humans to draw kids in. In this book the owls are talking to each other which in real life cannot happen,and that is why I think it is a good fantasy.… (more)